


Edge of the Wood, Age of the World

by lynndyre



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, M/M, Meet the Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-09
Updated: 2014-02-09
Packaged: 2018-01-11 17:03:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1175594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lynndyre/pseuds/lynndyre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the way back to Rivendell the remains of the Fellowship pass near Mirkwood-that-was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Edge of the Wood, Age of the World

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Liz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liz/gifts).
  * Translation into 中文 available: [林莽之际，墟荒之纪](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3073391) by [WendyShad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WendyShad/pseuds/WendyShad)



From Rohan, the remains of the Fellowship and those who travelled with them had taken the eastern route, following the Misty Mountains past Lorien and the land of the Beornings, and intending to cross over the mountain pass to Rivendell. 

The summer lingered in golden sunlight and rich warmth, but many of the homesteads in the woodsmen’s country were abandoned, some utterly destroyed, or burnt away. As they came nearer the eaves of what had been Mirkwood, and found the first of the great swathes of burned trees, Legolas’ low, keening cry had reached the ears of all who travelled with them. Elrond had watched the looks pass between Elladan and Elrohir, and had laid his hand on Elladan’s arm, turning them away, even as Sam corralled the taller hobbits.

Gimli reached around his friend’s body to turn Arod’s reins, and Elrond caught the low murmur of the dwarf’s voice, deep and persistent, until Legolas straightened and twisted in his seat. Elrond turned away, and met Gandalf’s eye doing the same. The wizard was smiling.

 

Upon Arod's back, Gimli held onto the reins and tightened his grip around his friend, binding Legolas' arms at his sides when the elf would have dismounted, and holding him fast. 

"Steady!" The trees that had blocked and tripped and irritated Gimli and his father on the road to Rivendell the year before were burnt away to dark stumps, broken trunks fallen and decayed, no longer strangling away sunlight and breath. Yet in his heart, Gimli could almost wish for that stifling forest to be restored, for the grief its destruction was working upon his companion.

A great shiver passed over the elf's body, and he subsided in Gimli's grasp, long fingers folding over Gimli's on his leather bracer. "So much was burned... Lord Celeborn brought us word, but it is worse to see the land so ravaged with my own eyes."

With neither rider directing his movements, Arod planted his feet more firmly and bent his head, nosing aside the ashy-dark remains of a fallen branch to lip at the new growth beside and beneath it, and Gimli's broad hands slipped out of Legolas' hold to sooth the elf's sides under the guise of adjusting his grip. "Your elf eyes could use a whetstone, if they have missed what even this horse has found."

Legolas looked down, and a moment later laughed like soft flowing water. "You are right, my friend. Already things grow again. I am indebted to your wisdom, and to Arod's!"

"I think it likely that debt will be repaid when we come near to Erebor, and I look upon the damage to my own homeland."

"Yet if ever there was a one who could regrow a forest of stone, I think I would place my faith in you." Legolas turned in his seat, and caught Gimli in a swift, one-armed embrace. "I am grateful for your steadfastness, Master Dwarf, while the world changes so swiftly."

 

Autumn was just beginning to hint in the sky and in the cool of night, as they followed the mountains to the west and Eryn Lasgalen to the east. The sense of purpose, however finite, that Elrond had gleaned from conversation with Galadriel and Celeborn was waning, and an empty chill lingered in his chest, in the shape of a daughter, a wife, a House he could no longer protect. Galadriel had called them diminished, the bearers of the Three, but Elrond felt unmade.

And then, in the rich yellow light of afternoon, as they began to seek the night’s campsight, Legolas’ voice could be heard again, this time crying out in joy – and a tall figure, clad in grey and green, yet crowned in branches, stood forth from the shadows of the trees.

Elrond watched Thranduil caress his son's face, and felt again Arwen's cheek beneath his fingertips, watched again as the light of the Eldar in her eyes faded and sharpened into the glow of mortal life, even as Elros' had done.

"My lord Elrond?"

Vertigo swirled unpleasantly at his center, and the forest reformed, unsteady before and around him. Elrond brought his hand up to his face, Vilya heavy and dead on his finger. 

"Father?" His sons were beside him.

"Begging your pardon, King Thranduil sir, but is there somewhere Master Elrond could rest?" Samwise. It would not do to distress the hobbits.

Gandalf spoke, and Elrond could no longer sense the echoes of Narya in his voice or in his soul. Nor could he distinguish the words. It was more than exhaustion or sorrow, and Elrond stared at his son, watching Elrohir's lips without hearing the sounds they made. He wondered when his spirit had truly started to fail.

A hand caught his wrist, and he looked down to a hand adorned with branching rings, into eyes as old as his own, with all the vivid depth of the living center of a deep forest. The voice that spoke in his mind was one he had not heard in yeni.

_”Hello again, Herald. Where have you left your standard?”_ And Elrond found that even drained and sorrowed to the point of swooning, he could still want to laugh.

 

Gimli watched the reunion of King and Prince with a curious eye. When Legolas had lept this time from Arod’s back, he had made no attempt to stay him. The bright joy in Legolas’ voice would have been enough for that, even had the figure he ran towards not held his very likeness, in more finished form. Seeing them beside one another, Legolas was a shining, rough-cut gem, and his father a time-wrought polished jewel. Gimli bit his lip and hid a smile behind his beard at the thought that some of the cleaves in the younger elf might have been at his hand and chisel. It would be a pleasure to shape one another.

Out from the trees the others of the king’s patrol emerged, appearing one by one where nothing had been visible. The sons of Elrond had also dismounted, and reached out with open hands to those they knew. This was no formal meeting of lords, but a reassurance of allies after a long battle.

The king himself stood still at the borders of the trees, face bent to his son’s, gazes locked. As Gimli watched, the Elvenking brushed back Legolas’ hair, and touched his cheek, and Gimli saw his ageless, irritating friend seem young for the first time since they had met.

He swallowed a strange joy, and it sat in his chest confusingly warm as he made his undignified dismount from Arod’s back. Yet when he turned, still straightening his surcoat, he found himself pinned beneath twin gazes, and beckoned forward to face his friend’s father, and father’s jailor.

Gimli planted his feet, and looked up, and Thranduil inclined his head. “Gimli son of Gloin. My son has found a strange ally, yet a worthy one. Elf-friend, be welcome in the Wood of Green Leaves.”

Gimli told himself his sudden loss of breath was because Legolas had clapped him on the back, and he bowed through his friend’s laughter. When he straightened, the Elvenking was smiling like a father, instead of a great lord, and Gimli tipped his head back and grinned broadly at them both.

 

While camp was struck, Elrond sat apart, having accepted the wine Elrohir pressed into his hand, but none of the food. Years upon uncounted years, Elrond had been host to those in need of healing, providing succor and assistance and welcome in his halls. Not since Lindon had he been the supplicant.

After a time, Thranduil knelt beside him, claiming the wineskin from Elrond’s distracted grip. Thranduil's crown had seemed all of bare branches, blackened and twisted and burnt, twined closely into his hair. Yet when Elrond stood closer, he saw it was not bare, but threaded through with the thinnest of vibrant green vines, and the scarred twigs were yet budded with new growth. 

The great trees, the strongest, with a memory of green, had best withstood the fire. Burned away were the lichen and hanging vines, as well as the clinging, sticky cobwebs of Shelob's many daughters. Huge, twisting trunks were exposed, fire-scarred, blackened in strange patterns by great sweeps of flame as by the strokes of a giant brush. Yet now, unfettered, they grew again, bringing forth new leaves, broad and deep and green with the end of summer. 

Elrond watched Thranduil's face, unchanged in features since the Second Age of Arda, and saw nonetheless evidence of the passage of time. The last and greatest of the Elvenkings of Middle Earth swept his gaze over Lord and Ringbearer alike, and his gaze was at once like and utterly unlike that of Galadriel. In Thranduil's eyes, Elrond felt the surging regrowth of green things in spring, the timelessness born of deep woods, not of Undying Lands.

There was immediacy in his eyes. Life, and growth. It was brought to Elrond's mind that the thoughts he and Gandalf had shared with the Lord and Lady of Lorien had held none of that sense of life. They, and she most of all, were disconnected from the world of Middle Earth, part and no longer part of events. And they had made themselves so- in pursuit of great ends, and great good had they both sought and accomplished. But their accomplishments would fade, and the more swiftly now, without the staying power of the Three to protect them. Elrond was gladdened to see that some, at least, of the Eldar, would continue un-weakened by that loss.

There was, almost, a fatalistic kind of symmetry in it. For years upon years, he had held Imladris inviolate, while darkness crept and spun itself about Thranduil's halls and lands. And now, as Mirkwood was reborn into new green, the Last Homely House would begin to fade.

“Tell me.”

Ever and ever, Thranduil was direct. Elrond made to gather thoughts that refused to be corralled, while the most recent burned like salt in the wounds of his spirit. "Arwen."

Thranduil's eyes flickered to meet his, and Thranduil accepted Elrond's fear and sorrow, the seemingly bottomless depth of knowing he would lose her, and knowing the sorrow that would come upon her final days. That which Elrond could not share with his wife's kin, for fear of it reflecting back their own. Thranduil drank the darkness in him until Elrond was spent, and reflected back only sympathy, and the echo of expected pain. 

"Healer, you are the worst of patients. Remember those you will keep, as well as those you lose. There was a herald, long ago, who held a hidden valley safe in his care though Sauron's forces overran all Eriador – and did so only with what wit and strength were in him. That strength is still there. I do not doubt the Three gave great power, yet at the end I am glad to have gone without. I see my cousin depleted in strength and in spirit, for his lands wither, and he must lose his wife to the West. I see her weariness in you. Even, though I wish it not, I see the ocean's call in my son, and he but walked beside the One.”

“All choices lead to an end. Yet it seems all the ends have come at once.”

"I have no gift such as yours with which to ease your body. Yet this much can I offer your spirit." As the twilight moved into night, and the air chilled, Thranduil rose and reached up his hands to the twisting branches, filling his palm with the evening dew. "Sleep, my friend of long ago, and dream only of joy. Find your hope again, for in your sorrow you have laid it aside.”

Gently, he blew over the water, and lifted his hand to Elrond's lips. Elrond bent to drink, letting Thranduil's free hand steady him, rings carding easily through the dark strands of his hair. Elrond swallowed, and Thranduil's thumb stroked away a stray droplet from the corner of his lip. Elrond's eyelids fluttered, and he exhaled. 

"This Greenwood is a new spring, a new growth, Elrond. This is what I _am_. There is enough of the wood in you for this to lend new strength.”

As the night deepened, Mirkwood's great black moths did come to the campfire, even as Bilbo had written. But the fire sat in a clearing, among the ravaged stumps and the beginning of new growth, and the moths that lit on Sam's finger and in Pippin's hair were velvet soft, and twisted their furry antennae in curiousity, until the hobbits laughed, and Gandalf shooed the moths away from the fire, lest they burn.

Legolas curled against his father’s side, legs tangled with Gimli’s as the dwarf smoked his pipe, blowing the smoke away from them into the night. Elrond tasted the smoke faintly against his lips, blending with the taste of Thranduil’s skin, familiar even after an Age of the world.

Elrond sent his thoughts out to his sons, and met their eyes with reassurance, received their love in return. Limbs heavy, Elrond moved to sit at Thranduil’s other side and gave himself over to sleep.

The aftertaste of dew hung in Elrond’s throat like perfumed air, and he drifted, on the edge of a dream, enfolded in a net of loving arms. Celebrian. Gil-Galad. Arwen, Elladan, Elrohir. Elros. Even, if he reached out, he could feel the touch of hands burned by the light of the two trees, and calloused by harpstrings.

Another hand brushed over his hair, freeing his circlet, and digging strong, soothing fingers into his scalp. Thranduil’s words were low, yet in the half-dream, Elrond felt them root deep in his heart.

"Take a little more joy in this world, before you leave it.”


End file.
